called The Good Life, on two radio stations in North Queensland. He also wrote columns for the Cairns Post, and he took no pay for his columns.
Tipple was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 1976. But by then he was looking further afield. He decided to go to Australia because his girlfriend had gone there. He arrived in Sydney in February 1976 and found employment as an administrative assistant at the Sydney University Law School. He also lectured part-time in Law at an institute for the Commonwealth Department of Foreign Affairs. From there, he joined the NSW Public Solicitors’ Office, in Bent Street, Sydney, and was assigned to the Indictable Section, dealing with serious crime, such as murder, manslaughter, robbery, rapes and serious assault.
Tipple was learning the criminal law from the bottom up. Being a Public Solicitor made him a “poor relation” in the legal establishment, but the work was far from boring. He went to Katingal, the maximum-security prison at Long Bay Gaol, to consult with Russell “Mad Dog” Cox. A week after Tipple took instructions from him, Cox thought a more expedient way than waiting for a court appearance was to escape. His escape from Katingal was one of the more famous of the state’s gaol breaks. “In Katingal, they would let you out for exercise so many hours a day,” Tipple said. “The only area not under surveillance was behind the door that opened out into the exercise yard. It was a cage. He had obtained a hacksaw blade and every time he went through the door, he jumped up and sawed at a bar. On the day he escaped, he cut right through the bar, got up and out. They shot at him.” The matter was mentioned in court the following week and Tipple remembers telling the judge, Justice Yeldham: “I was having difficulty getting instructions.”
Tipple also took instructions from James Edward “Jockey” Smith, who was a notorious bank robber and prison escapee, who was alleged to have shot at and tried to murder police officers. Smith had complained loud and hard about what he claimed was police corruption. “This case of Jockey Smith was a watershed moment for me,” Tipple said. “He was not a violent criminal, before he was labelled Public Enemy No 1. When I went to see him in Parramatta Gaol, I thought I was about to see this big, tough criminal. Instead I met this small man who sobbed about police corruption and how he had been fitted up.” According to Tipple, Smith claimed the police had said, ‘We will get you, you little bastard’.” When Tipple got into Smith’s case, he realised that the case against him was “full of holes”. “Smith had been identified by a police officer in court but he had failed to identify him from wanted posters in his police station,” Tipple said. “I saw this was dodgy. This identification evidence should not have been admitted.” When Tipple tried to speak to the Senior Public Defender, Howard Purnell, about it, Purnell was still inclined to write him off as Public Enemy No 1. This was a significant moment in Tipple’s development as a lawyer. Sure, the criminals are cunning and deceptive, and to meet that the police have to develop cunning themselves. There is a tendency for them, and the prosecutors, to stray beyond the bounds of professional objectivity.
There comes a point where the prospect of conviction/acquittal becomes a contest between individuals. Years later, Lindy Chamberlain would tell Tipple a police officer had told her: “We’ll get you, if not this time, we’ll get you next time.”
Tipple persisted in his advocacy for Smith. Whatever Tipple might have thought of him privately, Smith had rights. “You have to look at this case!” Tipple told him. Tipple persuaded Purnell there was merit in what he had to say. Purnell took up the case and Smith was acquitted, and it was another lesson for Tipple. “We had a wonderful win,” Tipple said. “Smith’s convictions for the shooting of a police officer, Jeremiah Ambrose, and the murder of bookmaker Lloyd Tidmarsh, were overturned. I realised then that no matter how skilled and experienced your barrister is, even a junior solicitor can have influence.”
In his work with Purnell, Tipple was appearing in the High Court and the Court of Criminal Appeal two days a week. In one case, he worked with the then Public Defender, Michael Adams, with whom he was to have later acquaintance. Tipple became involved in a case where an osteopath, Petronius-Kuff, had gone with a friend to Ron Hodgson Motors and produced a cheque as payment for a Jaguar car they drove off in. Kuff asked the dealer to hold the cheque because the money was still coming through. They later gave the dealer another cheque, which bounced. Kuff was charged with obtaining property through false pretences. Adams and Tipple argued that under the terms of the contract, Kuff never would never have gained legal ownership of the car until he had paid for it, and because Kuff didn’t pay for it, he was not guilty. The court decided obtaining possession of the car was enough and Kuff was convicted. “If they are against you, they are against you,” Tipple said later. “If a court decides your client is the bad guy and undeserving, it’s very difficult to win, no matter how good your legal arguments are.”
During his two years with the Public Solicitor’s Office, Tipple visited his sister, Trudi, who was working at the Sydney Adventist Hospital, “The San”, in Wahroonga. During one of those visits, he chanced upon another nurse “a beautiful girl”, Cherie Kersting, whom he asked out. One night, about to go to a law lecture, Tipple suggested Cherie should look for an engagement ring. “She had found one by the time I got out of my law lecture,” he said. After they were engaged Cherie graduated from her nursing course and moved to Melbourne to live with her parents. She began modelling and her agency urged her to enter the Miss World competition. Cherie decided not to because it would have delayed their wedding plans. The agency persuaded another model in their agency to enter and that girl went on to become the Miss World runner up. Stuart and Cherie married at the St John’s Uniting Church at Wahroonga on 5th December 1978.
As a married man, Tipple found the demands on his time exacting. He was constantly in court or going to prisons. His clients were for the main part, as legendary Sydney solicitor Bruce Miles put it, “the hopeless and the helpless”, and the nastiness of what he had to deal with started to wear. “What finished me was having to take instructions from a man who had killed a woman and had not told anyone about it so he could keep getting Social Security benefits,” Tipple said. “I saw these awful crime scene photographs and then had to interview this man, who happened to be suffering from tertiary syphilis. That was not the romantic criminal law that as a young lawyer you like to imagine. I thought there had to be better ways.” When he was on his honeymoon, Tipple saw a position advertised for a solicitor with Hickson Lakeman & Holcombe, a Sydney law firm, and applied for it.
Accepted by the firm, Tipple did general litigation work, acting most of the time for insurance companies. By now he was conscious of financial pressures. House prices in Sydney were rapidly rising and he feared, though he was now getting a professional salary, that he and Cherie might not be able to afford a home. So, where else could he go? Way out in the backblocks of the state? Or somewhere near to Sydney where the prices were lower. He looked to Gosford, where he had recently appreared in court. The Central Coast, which was a developing area and had good prospects, suited him and he bought a home in 1979. A friend sent him an ad by the Gosford law firm, Brennan and Blair, which was seeking a solicitor. He got the job and, as he realised, started at the bottom, “doing all the work nobody else wanted to do”.
The Chamberlains in north Queensland were living a full pastoral life. Michael went jogging every morning, it being the ethos of Seventh-day Adventists to be physically fit. Michael’s other great interest was photography. He carried a camera in a bag beneath his legs as he was driving, so he could whip the camera out at any moment. He was broadcasting and writing a column on health and fitness in the Cairns Post. On 17th June 1979, 15 kilometres south of Port Douglas on the North Queensland coast, Michael and Lindy Chamberlain picked up an accident victim, Keyth Lenehan, bleeding from lacerations to the skull. They put him into the car through the back. According to Lindy, he was lying with his feet in the hatch area of the car, with his shoulders on Lindy’s lap, and his head between the two front passengers’ seats. The blood might have flowed down between the two seats. Michael drove to Cairns Hospital where Lenehan was taken in as a patient. It was obviously a Christian thing to do, and which anyone with a sense of humanity would have done. Lenehan’s blood might well have run
